favorite recipes from a Northwest kitchen

Category Archives: What’s Cooking

Hello, friends. I haven’t been here for a few days, and I can’t stay long now. ‘Tis the season for many wonderful things, but also for colds, and my baby’s had a doozy. We’ve spent many hours in recent days (and nights) snuggling and rocking, a rare treat at this age when she’s usually so on the go. And when one sister is cuddling in my lap, the others usually like to come and pile in too. So we’ve been cozy. And I’ve had my lap (and hands) full. There’s no better gift, really. I hope you’re enjoying this month, and whatever light-filled holiday it brings to your family. If you have room for one more cookie in your jar, I recommend these sugar cookies. The recipe was passed down to me through a good friend’s family as “A Child’s Cookie,” and indeed the dough is just sturdy enough for little people to enjoy working with on their own.

And I can’t get enough roasted winter squash right now. I made a more substantial version of this Miso-Roasted Squash Salad, which may be my new favorite food. And if you didn’t catch this riff on the standard roasted squash wedges, I highly recommend that you try a batch drizzled with maple syrup and ancho chile powder in addition to the olive oil and salt.On My Plate

Thank you all so much for reading and chatting in the comments and telling me how things are going in your kitchen and always helping me out with good ideas when I need them! And I love seeing Emmy Cooks recipes in the wild–here are a few I’ve come across lately.Andrea’s Garden Cooking made my Roasted Cauliflower and Chickpea Salad.

Thanks again for being part of the Emmy Cooks community! If you like what you see here, you can sign up on the sidebar to receive a daily recipe by email, add the RSS feed to your own reader, or follow Emmy Cooks on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

I know it looks like all I do around here right now is eat pie. And tomorrow, steel yourselves, there will be more. But in between, we’ve actually been making all kinds of great things with tofu. A vegan variation of this saag paneer, and a vegan riff on this lemony broccoli and harissa dinner salad, and straight-up tofu with greens and rice and so-good spicy peanut sauce. Stay tuned. Because by this weekend we’ll all be over talking about Thanksgiving, won’t we? Or at least ready to sneak in some healthier meals among the gravy-laden feasts?In the Kitchen

Aside from the apples, this has been a very relaxing week for me in the kitchen. My in-laws visited last weekend and, as I’ve told you already, my mother in law is an excellent cook. She arrived with a stack of recipe print-outs and a plan, and she fed us well. What luxury. I could get used to that.

In The Kitchen

Menu 1: My mother in law made this leek and gruyere tart in puff pastry, which sparked a lively discussion about the difference between a tart and a pizza. The upshot, I think, is that if you want to serve something fancier than a pizza you should put the toppings on puff pastry instead of pizza dough. (These mushrooms and blue cheese would certainly work in puff pastry.) I made that super-green lemony spinach soup and my favorite summer crunch salad–which is too good to confine to summer–to serve with the tart.Menu 2: If you’re most people in the world, apparently you’ll love Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce. But whatever tomato sauce you choose, I recommend serving your pasta alongside roasted eggplant tossed with pesto and garlic bread. My favorite garlic bread formula is as follows: 2 Tb. softened butter, 1 Tbsp. olive oil, 2 pressed cloves of garlic, a big pinch of salt. Mix together and spread on a length of baguette. Top with fresh parsley and toast for a minute under the broiler.Preserving

Meanwhile, we’ve been peeling and peeling apples. We made more applesauce. A friend dropped two dehydrators by so we could dry countless apple rings (which somehow, once dried, shrink to an insignificant size that belies all the work it took to make them). And I made apple peel tea. I’ll tell you more about that this week.On My Plate

I’ll give you a clue about what’s cooking around here….But first, this: I was just reading about October Unprocessed, a project that has inspired literally thousands of people to take a pledge to eat only unprocessed foods during the month of October. I’d say I’m an avid home cook, but reading about this made me reflect on what it would mean for our family to take that pledge. No Os cereal for the baby. No granola bars for the kids on the go. No MSG-laced almonds at happy hour. (I don’t know if they really have MSG. But probably.) It would be kind of a big deal. Have any of you taken the pledge? Do you think you could?

And hey, what’s cooking in your kitchen this week? Please feel free to leave your seasonal favorites and links in the comments! Here’s the weekly glimpse into my kitchen.

In the Kitchen

Menu 1: Tune in to the Virtual Vegan Potluck on November 1 for a rich and creamy (vegan) roasted celery soup. We had it with homemade beer bread and cabbage and apple salad.Menu 2: J grilled sardines for maybe our favorite sandwich of all time: crusty bread, swipe of mayo, generous smear of dijon mustard, crunchy lettuce, grilled sardines. Try it. We had them with a cooked-greens salad and a beet-and-orange salad. (There I go again with the many-salads thing. So decadent!)

Today I canned 26 pints of applesauce (which meant four loads in the canner; maybe I’ll do quarts next year) and started a gallon of sauerkraut. Someone remind me to check it in a few weeks, please!I also dried the leaves from a bunch of celery and made a kind-of-amazing homemade celery salt. So far it’s gone on soup and buttered bread, and I can’t wait to sprinkle it on deviled eggs. What else should I do with it?

On My Plate

How many apples are in a bushel? I think I’ve still got at least that many in the basement. What are your favorite or most unique things to do with apples?

Thanks again for being part of the Emmy Cooks community! If you like what you see here, you can sign up on the sidebar to receive a daily recipe by email, add the RSS feed to your own reader, or follow Emmy Cooks on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

What’s cooking in your kitchen this week? Please feel free to leave your seasonal favorites and links in the comments! Here’s a glimpse into my kitchen:

Menu 1: Grilled salmon, salsa verde, and three salads. I always feel like it’s so decadent to have three salads. The first was a quinoa salad with corn, green onions, cilantro, tomatoes, and lime. The second was a plate of thinly sliced cooked beets dressed with olive oil, sherry vinegar, and chopped hazelnuts. The last was a lemony arugula salad.Menu 2: The leftover arugula salad & quinoa became ingredients in a batch of quinoa cakes, which I served with the leftover salsa verde. (We also slathered some of the quinoa cakes with tomato jam.) We had them with beet soup and braised greens in an anchovy broth.Menu 3: Pasta with Roasted Cauliflower, Tomatoes, and Olives (using fresh tomatoes instead of jarred) and a green salad. If you roast the cauliflower in advance, this meal can be ready in the time it takes to cook pasta.Other Tidbits:

Hello, friends! I’ve been kicking around a new idea, will you tell me what you think?

At this point there are so many recipes on this site that most of them are simply buried by time. (I need a recipe index, I know; the sidebar category search is rudimentary.) And although I’m posting new recipes daily here, I’m also always cooking my old favorites off-screen. I’m thinking that it might be fun to share more with you about my kitchen and what’s happening there from week to week.

Regular “What’s Cooking” dispatches would give me an opportunity to tell you what recipes I’m loving as the seasons go by, to tell you about delicious ideas that don’t rise to the level of being “recipes” themselves, and to show you how I fit these many individual recipes together as meals (and then repurpose the leftovers as more meals!). Hopefully this will give you some menu-planning inspiration and remind you, for example, that this is the week to roast a few pans of tomatoes to freeze for the winter.

I’m thinking that I’ll do these updates mid-week, as I’m regrouping between weekend cooking sprees. Also, “What’s Cooking Wednesday” is kind of cute, right? Don’t worry, I’ll try not to give in to the attraction of alluring alliteration. (Gah!)

Menu 2: A friend who loves me came over and washed and sliced every bunch of greens from my CSA box (ruby chard, rainbow chard, collard greens, and mustard). We sauteed the greens with an onion and the chard stems, then cooked half of them into a Pound-of-Greens Frittata with gruyere. We ate the frittata with salad and dollops of sweet and spicy tomato jam (recipe coming this week). Thin slices of leftover frittata replaced avocado in my favorite tomato sandwich the next day. (By the way, we also tried some of your favorite tomato sandwiches from the comments on the tomato sandwich post, and especially enjoyed Nicole’s version with Vegemite.)

This week we made and canned the excellent sweet and spicy tomato jam from the Food in Jars Cookbook (watch for a giveaway tomorrow!). We also did a batch of hot pepper jelly, which I had never made before, and I kept adding more chiles (and then red chile flakes) to taste enough heat. Later it occurred to me that perhaps the jelly becomes spicier with time? We’ll have to see how that one turns out!

I bought ten pounds of Roma tomatoes and roasted them to keep in the freezer. I freeze them in a single layer on a tray and then move them to a freezer bag or jar. This method ensures that the tomatoes don’t freeze into a solid block, so it’s easy to remove a handful at a time. Continue reading →

Recipe Search

Follow Emmy Cooks via Email

Welcome to Emmy Cooks

Thanks for joining us! Pull up a chair, or balance your computer on the edge of the counter and pull out your pots and pans. Here you'll find recipes for mostly wholesome, mostly vegetarian, always delicious real food. If you like what you see, you can sign up below to receive a daily recipe from emmycooks.com via Facebook, RSS, Twitter, or email.